At the present time, many large companies and government agencies off toll-free telephone calling service to their customers or constituents via 800 telephone service. Typically each company or agency establishes multiple diverse locations for receiving the calls. Each location has automatic call distribution equipment arranged for distributing among a group of attendants all of the calls received at that location. It is an objective of the company's or the agency's management to distribute the traffic load to reduce call blocking among the facilities being used and among the number of attendants contemporaneously working at the various locations for receiving calls. It is also an objective of the company's or the agency's management to determine the characteristics of their received calls for the purposes of business planning and resource allocation.
There are various known methods for distributing 800 telephone service calling loads among multiple locations. A U.S. Pat. No. 4,191,860, issued to R. P. Weber, describes a method for allocating calls to multiple locations on a fixed percentage basis. Another U.S. Pat. No. 4,611,094, issued to R. L. Asmuth et al describes a method enabling a company or agency to customize call processing logic for 800 telephone service calls. The call processing logic can be updated as traffic conditions change; however, the company or agency monitors the traffic into its own facilities, determines what if any changes should be made to the call processing logic, and manually makes those changes to the call processing logic. A copending patent application, Ser. No. 783,242, filed Oct. 2, 1985 U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,983 in the names of J. Frauenthal, W. L. Gerwirtz, T. G. Moore and R. P. Weber describes a method for balancing 800 telephone service calling loads based on traffic data gathered at the multiple locations for receiving calls. The traffic data includes items, such as, the speed of answer and the average time waiting in a queue. The method for balancing callings loads, as presented in the Frauenthal et al patent application, does not accommodate different strategies for specialized call handling capabilities which may exist for each location arranged to receive the calls.
In the prior art, there is no known arrangement or method for compiling traffic analysis data from call data collected from common circuitry in the network nor an arrangement or method for contemporaneously reduced total call blocking to multiple locations having specialized call answering capabilities for an 800 telephone service.